A disorder, such as a turbine trip, occuring in a nuclear electric-power production plant may necessitate the rapid shutdown of the nuclear reactor. Until now, the steam in steam generators used in pressurized-water nuclear plants has, at least partially, been dumped to the atmosphere upon an occurence such as a turbine trip. It has been proposed, for example, in German Offenlegungsschrift No. 24 59 150 that the resulting steam be instead condensed in auxiliary heat sinks and that the recovered condensate returned to the steam generator.
Because of the high blow-off efficiency of the blow-off valves, the steam is typically first dumped to atmosphere even when operating with a condenser of known type, since only the amount of heat limited by the design of the condenser and the permitted ultimate heat sink cooling system thermal contamination is removable through the condenser.
In order to assure a sufficient supply of emergency feedwater, sufficiently large tanks or vessels may be needed when other forms of water supply are unavailable or not otherwise usable since auxiliary or emergency condensers of known design are very costly. Furthermore, a feed-in system depending directly on condensation is not regarded to be very reliable.